As China Increases its Presence in the Western Hemisphere, Where is US Leadership?

General Wei Fenghe, minister of defense of the
People’s Republic of China, met with his Brazilian counterpart on September 6,
less than two months after the Asian nation’s minister of foreign affairs, Wang Yi, also visited the country. These
high-level meetings occur parallel to other major investment agreements, like a
port in Peru that will be constructed by a Chinese company.

While Beijing continues its
multidimensional approach to Latin America and the Caribbean, US leadership is
notably missing. Without a doubt, the US continues to enjoy strong diplomatic
influence, as well as significant defense and trade relations with its partners
and allies throughout the Americas. But Washington lacks a grand strategy
toward the Western Hemisphere, and Beijing is profiting from this situation.

Recent Developments

Listing all of China’s recent initiatives toward the Americas would be too time-consuming, hence we will focus on some notable developments. For example, apart from Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Brazil in late July—during which he participated in the third China-Brazil Foreign Ministers’ Comprehensive Strategic Dialogue with Minister Ernesto Araujo—the Chinese official also visited Chile.

As for the Caribbean, a June 4 article in Barbados
Today notes how, while the US continues to be the largest trading
partner with the Caribbean, China is increasing its presence: “China is third
only to the US and Trinidad & Tobago as Barbados’ largest import market,
with an import share of 5.65 per cent in 2017, according to World Integrated
Trade Solution (WITS) data.” China is also interested in Guyana because of its access
to Northern Brazil and oil deposits.

Andrei Serbin
Pont, an international affairs analyst and director of the think-tank
CRIES,
explained to the author that Beijing is increasingly “interacting more directly
with state-level and municipal-level authorities, to avoid possible diplomatic issues
with federal governments.”

Of course, Western Hemisphere
governments are not blind to global geopolitics, and they are aware of previous
deals with Beijing that have proven to be unfruitful. In an interview with the
author, Ryan Berg, Latin America Research Fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute in Washington, DC, explained that regional governments
have certainly “heard the stories of predatory financing through the so-called
Belt and Road Initiative; they fear job losses in their manufacturing sectors;
and they know about China’s support for authoritarian regimes in the region,
such as Venezuela and Nicaragua. Yet, having relations with the second-largest
economy in the world is, for many countries in the region, too good of an
opportunity to forgo.”

Where is Washington?

As for the US, high-level
meetings with regional policymakers continue to occur. For example, Admiral
Craig Fuller, commander of US Southern Command, which oversees US military
operations in most of Latin America and the Caribbean, regularly visits the
region. Case in point, he traveled to Colombia and Ecuador this past April. Latin
American and Caribbean policymakers also regularly visit Washington, such as
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez (though he is
accused of drug conspiracy), Guatemala’s President-elect Alejandro Giammattei, and Brazil’s
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ernesto Araujo, just
to name some high-profile visits in the last couple of months. US troops
recently participated in the multinational exercises UNITAS in Brazil and
Chile.

Alas, what is missing is both a
grand strategy and an interest from President Donald Trump toward the region as
a whole. Nowadays, the White House focuses on issues like immigration, trade,
and the Venezuelan problem, and views the rest of the region through those
prisms. Even more, President Trump appears to have lost interest in Venezuela
and de facto President Nicolás Maduro, while his administration has suspended aid to El Salvador,
Honduras, and Guatemala.

Unfortunately, the US has not
created some kind of grand strategy to deal with Latin America and the
Caribbean à la Theodore Roosevelt’s
Good Neighbor Policy or John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress. Serbin argues that “the US
forgot the region after 9/11, and it has been unable to re-strategize its presence
to stop extra-regional powers from entering the region.”

With regards to the future, as Berg
explains, “US policy tends to view problems as unique to specific countries and
fails to see the broader networks that impact the entire region. However, a
vision for a free, secure, and prosperous hemisphere requires an understanding
of how many issues have become transnational. In other words, our policymakers
need to learn how to connect the dots throughout the region better.” Any future
US grand strategy toward the region must be “flexible and diversified,” not a
Cold War-era plan, Serbin added.

It is in this situation that
extra-hemispheric actors are thriving in Latin America and the Caribbean,
particularly China.

Final Thoughts

Out of 33 independent countries
that make up Latin America and the Caribbean, the US enjoys cordial relations
with the grand majority of them—the exceptions being Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua,
and Venezuela. In other words, Washington’s problem is not a lack of partner
and allies in the Western Hemisphere, as the overwhelming majority desires to
be on good terms with the US.

Unfortunately, Washington’s
concerns regarding other parts of the world, and its focus on solely a handful
of issues relating to the Western Hemisphere, such as migration and Venezuela,
are not enough to create a long-term grand strategy. Meanwhile, China’s
strategy to the region is clear: create and secure allies by primarily focusing
on trade, financial assistance, and a willingness to work with whatever
government is in power in order to create the impression of a benevolent
partner. This can help Beijing achieve other objectives, like reducing Taiwan’s
pool of allies in the Western Hemisphere, and even reduce US influence in some
countries.

Washington may not have
forgotten Latin America and the Caribbean, but it does not know what to do with
these two regions nowadays. Beijing does.